Darkoshi

I had never heard about this before. The first piece on it which I read this evening left me thinking it must be a fake story. But unfortunately, like most things about human history, it's not fake.

Tulsa, 1921 - 1921 article by Walter White for The Nation

TULSA RACE RIOT - Oklahoma Historical Society

A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 - a very detailed report from 2001, with photos, which I haven't had time to read.

Wikipedia article - Summary:

The Tulsa race riot, or Tulsa race riot of 1921, occurred between May 31–June 1, 1921, when a white mob started attacking residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in what is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States. The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the nation. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 39 dead, but the American Red Cross estimated 300, a number supported by historians since then.

It goes like this:

Last night:
Check TV guide to see what's on TV.
PBS is showing "1916 - The Irish Rebellion. The story of the Easter Rising rebellion...."
Do a search on something related to that. Irish Volunteers, etc.
Skim various pages.
Start wondering if the U2 song "Bloody Sunday" refers to the Easter Rising.
Do a search.
Oh. There are a whole bunch of Bloody Sundays.
One of them: Stanislawow Ghetto Bloody Sunday massacre, a massacre of 10,000 to 12,000 Jews before the Stanisławów Ghetto announcement.
Read about horrors.
Ghettos, concentration camps, mass killings, mass graves.
Click links; read about more horrors.

I never can wrap my mind around it. In a way, I don't want to. That's why I try to avoid the topic. But for my own sanity, I want to understand it. How could such things happen? How could people come to commit such atrocities? I'm terrified of it happening again. I'm terrified that it is happening, constantly around the world, in smaller versions. How can I be safe? How can I be sure that I'd never be involved in such a thing? What control do I have over the things my government is doing? Am I really any different from the average German civilian back then?

And it also puzzles me, in reading some things, as to why the victims didn't fight back more? Some parts I can understand. If soldiers come for you and your family with guns, yes, you're likely to do what they say rather than to be shot to death right there. Maybe going where they tell you to go, will let you survive in the end.

But I have a hard time understanding the mass shootings. Surely it can't be that 10,000 people would stand together in a crowd, letting themselves be shot to death, for hours on end, as some of those articles imply? Surely they would have surged forward against the shooters, knowing that death was imminent anyway? Were the shooters up on walls? Wouldn't piles of dead bodies would have gotten in the way of further shooting? Did the shooters take breaks so that the bodies could be moved out of the way? Were the Jews so starved and demoralized by that point, that they welcomed death? Who would want to remain living in a world like that?

And it wasn't only Jews being killed. There were mass killings of ethnic Poles too, by both the Nazis and the Soviets. And masses of people being deported to Soviet labor camps. How could mass killings be so common back then? How could people so callously disregard life? Was it a state of mind? That to have revolutions and change society, you need to kill the existing society that stands in your way?

The German side of my family came from the area right near Poland, so that's another reason I'm often drawn to reading about these kinds of things.

After over an hour of that, I managed to make myself to switch gears, and return to doing my taxes.

Today:

Read an email about local events.
One event is "South Carolina survivors and victims of the Holocaust".
Am reminded of that first page I read last night. I bring up the page again, and read it again. Again trying to wrap my mind around it. Yesterday wasn't the first time I'd read those kinds of things. But as many times as I read them, it seems I'll never be able to come to terms with them.

Clicked some other links related to the history of Germany before World War II. Republic, unification, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdoms, duchies... All of history seems to be full of wars and fighting and horrors. I've always hated history.

Here I sit, in my peaceful house, in front of my computer. Relatively clean, fed, clothed, and warm. Even if I'm not particularly enjoying life, it's not particularly bad.

But the world is full of horrors, and I'm quietly terrified that someday they will strike me personally, and this relatively peaceful world will be blown to bits.

I like the implication of the pronoun on this mailing.

"Our next president will face many challenges and difficult decisions. But they will also inherit our nation's proud legacy of helping those in need."

I've always known that the 1960s were a turbulent time with the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights movement going on. But I don't recall ever having heard before about the radical left-wing organization, the Weather Underground, and that they actually bombed places including the Pentagon. Reading about that, and about the Days of Rage riots, and about how Black Panther Fred Hampton was murdered by police, gives me more of a sense of just how unstable things must have felt back then.

I also find it interesting that to the best of my recall, my American History classes never mentioned the Haymarket Riot that happened in Chicago in 1886. I have much respect for the people back then who fought and struggled for labor rights and an 8-hour work day.

It also intrigued me that the leaflets from back then pictured on the Wikipedia page were written both in English and German. Even though I have German ancestry, I hadn't realized there was so much immigration from Germany to the U.S. even before the 1900s.

3 Myths that Block Progress for the Poor - Gates Foundation annual letter.

via andrewducker

I've been going through some old letters of my mom's, while working on the family tree.

One of my German great-aunts was Catholic and very religious. In her letters, she often urged my mom to pray and to do the rosary, and things like that, as it was necessary for getting into heaven. Her version of Catholicism seems quite cult-like to me.

In one of her letters, she told my mom that she had asked a priest whom she was friends with to get in touch with my brother, who was in Munich at the time. The priest had invited my brother to come hear him speak. Apparently, my brother declined, and the aunt wrote to my mother that she had been horrified to find out that my brother belonged to the "Bakhwans" (he was a sannyasin of Bhagwan). She said that must be the worst sect/cult ever! In light of her own religiosity, that amused me.

But one very interesting thing I found was an account of how she fled the East with her family. Even though they were not Jewish, she wrote that at one point, Oskar Schindler helped them out:
"...wir fuhren nach Brünn/Brüsau zu Oskar Schindler, der ein großer Wohltäter an den jüdischen Familien war. Er hatte dort eine Fabrik und gab uns auf den Weg viele Ballen Stoffe mit, damit wir uns damit über Wasser halten konnten."

But I'm not quite sure how he helped them; I don't quite understand the meaning of the 2nd sentence. It sounds like he gave them bolts of cloth... Maybe they sold it for money? Or made clothes from it?

The Brazen Bibliophiles of Timbuktu - How a team of sneaky librarians duped Al Qaeda

t160k.org - a campaign to raise money to protect the manuscripts, which now face problems related to moisture and mold.

T160K: Libraries in Exile from Evaporate Entertainment on Vimeo.

Similar to the previous link I had posted...
Color photos from Russia in the early 1900's

It's oddly surprising to see that they had green grass back then too.

Last Friday, after Qiao and me had been shooting some pool in a pool hall, Qiao commented that he had been disturbed to see a few children there. One had been a small child who was obviously only there because the parent was. Another few persons had looked to be of teenage years, and were shooting pool together.

My own first experiences with playing pool had been when I was a child, in vacation hotels and possibly in a few German restaurants. So it seemed an odd idea that there might be laws here in the U.S. against kids being in a place where pool/billiards was played.

Qiao said that most pool halls were like bars and served alcohol. The one we were in wasn't very bar-like, but apparently does have beer available. I can understand it if kids aren't allowed in bars, because a bar's main purpose is to sell alcohol, and kids are not allowed to have alcohol. But it still seems strange to ban kids from being in a pool hall, where the main purpose is pool, not alcohol. What is wrong with a kid playing pool? Unless perhaps, they are gambling, but in that case it should be the gambling that is disallowed, not the playing of pool.

Anyway, so I looked up what the laws are here in South Carolina, and found this:

SECTION 63-19-2420. Loitering in a billiard room.
It is unlawful for a person under eighteen years of age to loiter in a billiard or pocket billiard room or to play billiards or pocket billiards in a billiard room unless accompanied by the person's parent or guardian or with the written consent of the person's parent or guardian.

I *also* found this:

SECTION 63-19-2430. Playing pinball.
It is unlawful for a minor under the age of eighteen to play a pinball machine.

Eh?? In my growing-up experience, only *kids* played pinball! To me, pinball is a kids' game. But there's a SC law still on the books that forbids kids from playing pinball here.

So then I googled about that, and found this interesting old article from 1942. Apparently way back then, pinball games were a topic of dispute. San Diego even banned them entirely, after "a delegation of all the ministers of the city churches" paid a visit to the county council.

Juke boxes were a topic of dispute back then too. But apparently that was due to concerns that it would hurt musicians' livelihood.
"...union musicians [were barred] from making radio transcriptions, juke box records, and commercial recordings not for home use.
In the nationwide controversy that followed, union spokesmen argued their action was a case of self-preservation; the canned music actually tended to destroy the musicians' livelihood. Against this, radio spokesmen and others, including the government, contended that the ban resembled a monopoly and threatened to put many small radio stations and other businesses out of existence."

That entire periodical ("The Billboard - The World's Foremost Amusement Weekly") seems fascinating to me; to read about how things were like back in 1942.


This page lets you search SC laws and regulations.